About

Ju Hui Judy Han is a feminist geographer specializing in religion, mobility, and difference. Her research focuses on transnational Korean LGBTQ+ activism, mapping sites of struggle across South Korea and the United States, and examining the solidarity, community, and political imagination revealed through activism.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Gender studies
• Law
• Geography
• Aeronautics
• Meteorology
• Engineering
• Religious studies
• Theology
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• Again and again, against abandonment ChunJennifer JihyeHanJu Hui Judy, Against Abandonment: Repertoires of Solidarity in South Korean Protest, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 2025; 332 pp., $42.00 (paper): ISBN: 9781503642256.

  Critical Sociology · 2025-10-15

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
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• Out of Place in Time: Queer Discontents and <i>Sigisangjo</i>

  The Journal of Asian Studies · 2022-02-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article discusses queer and transgender voices that took part in the South Korean Candlelight Protests of 2016–17 but became sidelined during the special election that followed Park Geun-hye's impeachment. Drawing from theories of queer temporality and feminist critiques of homogenous time, the article argues that idioms of postponement ( najunge ) and prematurity ( sigisangjo ) have significantly shaped liberal political discourses regarding the timing and timeliness of social change and minority politics in South Korea. These normative idioms of temporality articulate the stakes of being out of place in time.

  PublisherDOI

• LGBTQ+ Politics and the Queer Thresholds of Heresy

  Fordham University Press eBooks · 2022-07-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Showing how struggles in some U.S. Protestant denominations have counterparts elsewhere (in this case, in Presbyterian churches in South Korea), this chapter examines the condemnation of Reverend Lim Borah for heresy (<italic>idan</italic>) by the largest evangelical denomination in South Korea for her contributions to queer theology and LGBTQ+ ministry. The Lim case reveals the political function of heresy. Evangelical Protestants in South Korea have employed heresy to discredit and silence dissenting minorities and demarcate the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior. Paradoxically, however, Han maintains that heresy serves not only to stifle dissent, but also to uncover it. Han contends that the exercise of institutional power reveals its limits in the Lim case by rendering visible “new queer vitalities” and by highlighting the power of dissenting movements to interrogate the legitimacy of anti-LGBTQ+ orthodoxy.

  PublisherDOI

• 10. LGBTQ+ Politics and the Queer Thresholds of Heresy

  Fordham University Press eBooks · 2022-07-21 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• LGBTQ˖ Politics and the Queer Thresholds of Heresy

  Fordham University Press eBooks · 2022-07-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• The Politics of Postponement and Sexual Minority Rights in South Korea

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Despite some policy gains and expanded civil liberties, sexual minorities in South Korea face challenges from both conservatives and liberals. While anti-LGBTI conservatives seek to block equal rights and antidiscrimination laws, many liberal politicians have been reluctant to embrace sexual minority rights as fundamental human rights. In many instances, they portray sexual minority rights as premature, rather than permanently impossible, asserting that it is “not yet” the right time in Korea. This chapter discusses early LGBTI mobilization in the 1990s in three parts: the solidarity politics cultivated with labor and emerging human rights activism against state violence and national security surveillance; the untimely deaths of LGBTI activists; and so-called youth protection policies that deferred freedom and empowerment for LGBTI youth. This discussion is paired with an analysis of how LGBTI rights activism fared during and after the Candlelight Protests in 2016–17 in what I call a “politics of postponement.”

  PublisherDOI

• High-Altitude Protests and Necropolitical Digits

  University of British Columbia Press eBooks · 2020 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Aeronautics
  • Geography
  • Meteorology
  PublisherDOI

• The Queer Thresholds of Heresy

  ˜The œjournal of Korean studies · 2020 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Religious studies

  Abstract Disputes over heresy are not new or uncommon, as mainline Protestant denominations in South Korea have historically deemed numerous minor sects and radical theologies to be heretical to the Christian faith. However, when the largest evangelical denomination in the country, the Presbyterian Church in Korea (Hapdong), began investigating Reverend Lim Borah (Im Pora) of the Sumdol Hyanglin Church in 2017 and subsequently ruled her ministry to be heretical, they charted new grounds by denouncing LGBTI-affirming theology and ministry as heresy. This article traces the semantic ambiguity and politics of the term for heresy, idan, and highlights the intersection of heretical Christianity, gender and sexual nonconformity, and ideological dissidence. The argument is that growing interests in queer theology and calls for LGBTI-affirming ministry stoked the flames of efforts by beleaguered Protestant denominations to use heresy to discredit and stigmatize dissident practices, and that rather than simply stifle dissent, the subsequent controversy also exposed the limits of dominant power and the contours of vital resistance.

  PublisherDOI

• 7. Urban Megachurches and Contentious Religious Politics in Seoul

  2019-05-07 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• Shifting Geographies of Proximity:

  2018-08-02 · 9 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jennifer Jihye Chun

  University of California System

  2 shared

• Abdou Maliq Simone

  1 shared

• Filip De Boeck

  1 shared

• Smriti Srinivas

  1 shared

• Tari Young-Jung Na

  1 shared

• Mary Hancock

  1 shared

• Se-Woong Koo

  1 shared

• Ahmed Kanna

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Geography

  University of California Berkeley

Awards & honors

• UCLA Center for the Study of Women/Barbra Streisand Center,…
• Podcast Support Grant, University of California Humanities R…
• Society of Hellman Fellows Award, UCLA (2021-22)
• UCLA Faculty Career Development Award (2018-2019)
• Co-Applicant, “Protesting Publics in South Korea,” Social Sc…